


Cairo Sunset

by FayJay



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-14
Updated: 2009-05-14
Packaged: 2017-10-02 09:22:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FayJay/pseuds/FayJay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Bill Weasley happens across Severus Snape acting very suspiciously, and follows him through Cairo, and gets rather more than he bargained for...</p><p>(written long before 'The Half-Blood Prince' was published, so now it's AU - at the time it was speculative Futurefic.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dusk

A pale afreet with glittering eyes was deftly changing the coals in Bill's sheesha pipe when Professor Severus Snape stepped out of the fireplace in Diagon Ali's Interpet Cafe. Bill recognised the man at once, and curiosity made him withdraw into the shadows of his little alcove that he might observe without being noticed himself. Bill wore a galibeya of the same simple cut and muted colours as the local wizards, and it was the work of a moment to pull the white cotton scarf up over his head to hide his distinctive hair. Amidst all the brightly clad tourists and ex-pats and locals, Bill felt fairly confident that he might go unremarked.

It took the professor a moment or two to adjust to his surroundings: the filigree lamps gave out little light, and the air was thick with the cardamom-rich scent of Turkish coffee and the seductive apple tang of flavoured sheesha smoke. Beneath these smells there was the unavoidable musk Bill always associated with the Owlery at Hogwarts; arrayed all over one long wall of the coffee shop were owls and bats and messengers of every shape and size, whose services were available for a very reasonable charge. Many of the customers were engaged in penning quick missives home between gulps of coffee, then fastening the little scraps of papyrus to the legs of rented birds and sending them out into the warm night air. Light glinted off the gilt glass of water pipes and from ornate silver trays, and the chatter of wizardly merchants and shoppers vied with the tinny sound of artificially produced Arabic music that carried from the bazaar's nearby Muggle streets. The conversation in the cafe was in a host of different languages, many of them not designed for human vocal chords, but the vast majority of the customers were English-speakers. Ali El Din Salem Salem was a Londoner himself, and he had gone out of his way to prepare a menu and an ambience with as many British features as Egyptian ones. It had proved popular with locals and visitors alike, and whenever Bill found himself craving a taste of home he popped in and ordered Toad in the Hole, Bubble and Squeak or Cheese-and-Pickle Toasties, to be followed by a nice glass of mint tea and a relaxing water pipe.

The newly-arrived Professor Snape blinked irritably and peered into the gloom as one of the cafe's hosts offered him a bowl of rosewater to wash the floo dust from his fingers.

"Shukran," said Snape perfunctorily, handing the waiter a couple of knuts. Bill's eyes widened. The accent, surprisingly, really wasn't half bad; Classical Arabic, rather than Egyptian, but perhaps that was only to be expected. Bill brought the mouthpiece of his sheesha pipe thoughtfully up to pursed lips and breathed in a lungful of apple-flavoured sheesha smoke. The cloud that he breathed out shifted from green to blue to purple and back again as it wreathed his head. Snape glanced around with an expression that seemed almost suspicious, but, gratifyingly, he paid Bill absolutely no attention. To Bill's quiet satisfaction the professor accepted a seat at a tiny, ivory-inlaid table near the door which was easily in Bill's line of sight. He had his back to Bill, which was a little frustrating, but probably just as well in the long run.

Bill realised with a little embarrassment that he was getting a considerable kick out of playing spies like this, silly though it undoubtedly was. It reminded him of the cloak and dagger days of chasing after runaway Death Eaters after young Harry Potter had disposed of Voldemort. More than likely Snape was just here to see a supplier - the vast bazaar of Khan El Khaleili had a far better range of potions ingredients than Diagon Alley could ever boast. And yet - it was odd, to see him here. And there seemed to be something slightly - furtive - about his manner. Bill lifted the tea to his lips and took a meditative sip. Across the room, Snape accepted a creamy menu from an obsequious afreet and Bill could just make out the squirm of movement as the sinuous curves of Arabic writing stiffened and straightened into neat English script under Snape's unsmiling regard. He scanned the list, shrugged, and ordered an infusion of Hibiscus petals. Bill's eyebrows twitched again, infinitesimally. He had rather expected black coffee, or perhaps something acidic.

Some minutes passed, and Bill watched the professor accept his glass of Karkaday and swallow it with unseemly haste. He drummed long fingers on the tabletop and then pulled a slip of parchment from a pocket inside his robe. Bill was too far away to read what it said, but it was clearly a message of some kind. An assignation? wondered Bill, suddenly unable to suppress a grin. Now *that* would be funny as hell - he couldn't wait to see who Severus Snape was so nervous about meeting, and so secretly too. *That* piece of gossip was one that Fred and George would really relish. Bill ran through the possibilities in his mind and his grin grew broader and broader. Professor Sprout, perhaps? Or Gilderoy Lockheart? Or possibly Verity Hemlock, whose writing he so publicly dismissed?

Bill's musings were cut short by the sudden arrival of a medium-sized vampire bat that swooped through the open window and landed delicately on Snape's table. It carried a dainty message scroll strapped to one small foot. Bill craned his head forwards, thoroughly fascinated now. Interestingly, Snape had frozen quite still when the creature landed, as if by not moving he could manage to go unnoticed. For a long moment he made no attempt to relieve it of its burden; indeed, if anything he seemed almost poised to flee. Curiouser and curiouser, thought Bill, who had dabbled in forbidden Muggle literature from time to time.

At last Snape stretched one tentative hand towards the bat. It waddled closer, its ears whirling around, and butted its little scull against his fingers with every appearance of familiarity. He stroked its head tentatively, and then offered it a fingertip to feed from. Bill grimaced. The little creature clung to him almost loverlike as its teeth pierced his skin and it lapped at the sudden flow of red, and for a long time Snape sat quite still, ignoring the unopened scroll as if by doing so he could make it disappear. At last the bat let go and backed away, and Snape lifted the wounded fingertip up to his mouth in a gesture that was curiously childlike. It struck Bill then that he could probably have been wearing a gold lame robe and been accompanied by the entire Weasley clan all dancing the lambada and still not have impinged upon Severus Snape's consciousness at this point.

He stared down at the bat for a long moment, and then knocked back the last of the jewel-bright Karkaday. There was a curious set to his shoulders as he finally unfastened the scroll from the creature's proffered foot. His hands were shaking. He really did not strike Bill as particularly happy about the message even before he had uncurled it, but as he read it he seemed to hunch up and withdraw into himself, almost as if he were aging before Bill's eyes. Is she standing you up, old man? Bill wondered unkindly, and he watched as the professor fed the little scrap of parchment into the flame of the small candle in the centre of his table. As soon as it was gone, Snape clutched almost convulsively at the elbow of a passing waiter and muttered a request, and a moment later he was handed a fresh slip of papyrus and a sharpened quill. There was a neat little inkpot on the table already, as there was on every table, nestled beside the sugar bowl. Bill watched as the quill was dipped into the ink and then dragged hastily across the pale paper, but he had absolutely no idea of what Snape could be writing, or to whom. In a twinkling, he had finished and was fastening the scroll gently around the bat's ankle once more. With the weird, ungainly grace of its species the bat unfurled wings like flexible slices of umbrella, and hurled itself back into the smoky air.

In his solitary chair, Severus Snape was trembling. Bill wished he could see the man's face.

He was unsurprised when the professor scrabbled in his money pouch and rose; Bill had already tipped the sheesha-tending demon and left a generous handful of coins on his own table. When Severus Snape left the cafe, Bill Weasley was only a few paces behind him.

Outside, the Street of Smoke and Dreams was thronging with busy shoppers of every nationality, despite the lateness of the hour. Witches and wizards, vampires and shape-shifters, goblins and djinnis and creatures stranger still strolled through the warm night in ones and twos and family groups. All around, people were dickering over chasubles and saffron and mortars and crystals and small plaster statues of the Sphinx. Jasmine scented the air, along with camel dung and lemons and barbecued kebabs. Coins clinked in hands and on headscarves, and there were dervishes whirling on a makeshift stage. Bill smiled in spite of himself; he loved living here.

Ahead of him Severus Snape was picking his way purposefully between stalls, fending off offers of sweet potatoes and embroidered galibeyas so successfully that Bill could perfectly imagine the glower he must be wearing. He followed the professor at a cautious distance, and then had a rather splendid idea.

Darting across to a little stall he hailed the nine-fingered old Nubian witch who crouched behind an array of talismans and amulets with a familiar smile. "Salam Alecum," he said hastily, glancing over his shoulder at the vanishing figure of Snape to be sure that he did not lose his quarry in the process of trying to ease his pursuit. "Honeyed evening to you, Farida daughter of Seif. Might this one buy one of your very fine chameleon glamours?" She leered toothlessly at him and proposed an outrageously high sum, which Bill countered with an offer of an outrageously low sum. Under normal circumstances the bargaining would have been leisurely, but Bill was pressed for time; within half a minute he had handed over two silver crescents and a handful of copper ankhs in exchange for a disposable disguise, and Farida was gaping delightedly at the profit she had wrung from him. He would be the talk of the market, he knew, but there was no helping it. Bill slipped the little amulet hastily over his head and then hurried after Snape with no more fear of being noticed. Muggle Cairo was popular with visiting wizards - although the Library of Alexandria had been successfully disguised from the Muggle world long centuries ago, there were still many sites of magical interest that were in Muggle areas. Moreover, the Muggle sections of Cairo's great bazaar held many potions ingredients, and many tourists enjoyed the frisson of buying from unsuspecting Muggles. Temporary glamours were an immensely popular and easy way of passing unremarked.

Bill found himself unsurprised when Snape left The Street of Smoke and Dreams behind and stepped out onto the streets of Muggle Cairo. Very clearly, the professor was not here to see a supplier or buy a plaster pyramid. He was up to something. It only remained to discover precisely what.

There had been whispers, not so many years ago, that Severus Snape had never been loyal to the Order of the Phoenix. There had been whispers that he secretly supported Voldemort - suggestions that perhaps he had even had a hand in Dumbledore's death. Nothing had ever been proved, of course. Still, there had been whispers.

Bill watched the professor stalking silently through these strange streets and wondered whether any of them had ever really known him. His hand tightened around his wand. Overhead Bill could glimpse the sky blushing luridly as the sun dipped towards the horizon, slices of it visible in blood-bright slices between buildings, pierced by minarets. The sky roads were invisible from the ground, but Bill knew that overhead hundreds of magic carpets and a handful of broomsticks were swooping back and forth. Muggle Cairo was dirtier and dingier than Wizarding Cairo, but otherwise there was little enough difference, at least in this quarter of the city. Cars were an occasional peril, battered and wheezing and pumping out raucous Arabic songs, but the more usual form of Muggle transport around here tended to be horse-drawn carts, or donkeys. Neither cars nor donkeys seemed to care which side of the street they travelled on. Unwillingly, Bill found himself quite impressed that Snape remained unflapped by his surroundings, but then he had a reputation for being difficult to disconcert.

Snape finally stopped at one of the restored mansions that peppered the Khan. It had once been a grand house, but the years had not treated it kindly - now, though, the ornate mashrabeya window screens had been restored and the interior probably restored to some echo of its former glory. Bill knew the type of place well enough - there were dozens of them open to the Muggle public. Indeed, there remained many in the Wizarding section of the Khan that had never fallen into disrepair in the first place. The Head of the local branch of Gringott's lived in just such a house, off the Street of Smoke and Dreams, and Bill had been invited over for dinner on several occasions.

Bill watched Snape pause outside the vast wooden door and stare at it for a long moment before he lifted one pale fist to knock at it. The professor glanced over his shoulder, even looked directly at Bill himself, but evidently saw nothing out of the ordinary. Bill blessed Farida's little charm and stepped closer, and then closer still, until he was so close that he feared the hushed sound of his breathing might alert Snape to his presence, even if the man could see nothing amiss. He needn't have feared. Snape was far too focussed upon the door in front of him to pay any heed to the faint whisper of breath near his ear.

He knocked once more, harder this time, and Bill looked speculatively from Snape's tense face to the door and back again. He had no idea what to make of Snape's expression. Almost it looked as though the other wizard was in physical pain. Probably got an ulcer, reflected Bill uncharitably, knowing that it was nothing so simple.

After an interminable length of time, they both heard the sound of footsteps. Someone peered through a small mashrabeya screen set into the door, and then there was the sound of bolts being drawn back. The door creaked open to reveal a darkened courtyard. Snape swallowed - Bill watched his Adam's apple bob - and then stepped inside. Impulsively, Bill followed him.

The door closed heavily behind them, and Bill wondered what the bloody hell he thought he was playing at. If he didn't manage to leave within the hour, the charm on the amulet would run out and he would find himself up to his neck in Merlin knew what. This as quite the most ridiculous thing he had done in - well, in at least a week.  
He wasn't expecting the sudden flood of Muggle electric light, and it made him jump. But that was nothing to his astonishment at the sight of Lucius Malfoy, whom all the Wizarding World confidently believed had died months ago. His hair was cut short, and he wore Muggle clothes, but he was quite unmistakeably Lucius Malfoy.

Bill gaped, and stared at Snape. The professor was blinking in the harsh light, but he had his wand drawn and his stance was every inch that of the experienced duellist facing a potentially lethal opponent. Bill made a quick mental readjustment.

"Severus."

It wasn't uttered like an endearment, but something in the tone - and something else in Snape's expression - made several pieces of the puzzle fall swiftly, if belatedly, into place for Bill. He fought a suicidally inappropriate urge to laugh out loud.

"You're alive," Snape rasped, and there was a quality in his voice that quite quashed Bill's desire to laugh. The intensity with which he regarded Lucius was almost painful to look at.

"What a spectacularly redundant statement, Severus." Lucius looked his guest up and down with every appearance of amusement. "Nothing changes, I see. You need a bath - your hair is absolutely foul - and the hem of your robe is starting to fray. You look like a scarecrow." Snape glanced down at his immaculate black robe and Bill experienced a sudden sense of dislocation. He could almost see them then as they must once have been: a greasy, sallow teenager tagging along after this shining paragon of Slytherin values. "Evidently this is what comes of living in the midst of Gryffindors and their ilk."

Snape shook his head, visibly rejecting this echo of the past, and his knuckles whitened as he clasped the wand more tightly. The scowl he cast at Lucius was almost exactly his usual bad-tempered expression. Almost.

"Under the circumstances that surely counts as the bat calling the cauldron black. I presume you had some reason for summoning me? Or were you merely weary of your own company, and overwhelmed with an urge to criticise my appearance?" Lucius smiled again, and there was something in the way he met Snape's gaze that made Bill decidedly uncomfortable. It seemed to be having a similar effect on the professor, because after a long moment he drew an uneven breath and looked away. "You seem remarkably sanguine about my presence. How do you know there aren't two dozen Aurors waiting outside, armed to the teeth? Or that wretched Potter boy?"

Lucius shrugged. The gesture was effortlessly graceful and it reminded Bill of Harry Potter's boyfriend, whom he had had occasion to meet, if not warm to, several times. (Molly Weasley was still clinging to the increasingly slender hope Harry's proclaimed homosexuality, or at least his inexplicable fondness for a Malfoy, was just a phase he was going through. A phase which had now lasted more than three years, and which had resisted all Molly's well-meant attempts to subvert it, but a phase nevertheless.)

"Why don't you come inside?" Lucius casually indicated the door that led from the courtyard into the Muggle house beyond, and although his tone was still that of an irritable Emperor, his body language reminded Bill of Charlie. There was something there that echoed the way he'd seen Charlie handling a feral wyvern, blithely pretending to be more dangerous than it was and ignoring the razor-sharp talons altogether whilst he roared in its face and stared it down until he had browbeaten it into going where he wanted it to be. Bill watched a glowering and truculent Snape cross his arms across his chest, fingers still clenched around his wand, and frown like thunder as Lucius turned on his heel and strolled nonchalantly into the house.

There was a moment when he thought that Snape was going to leave, or possibly let loose one of the Unforgivable Curses, but at last he followed Lucius through the open door. Bill was only half a step behind.

* * *

 

It was the first time that Bill Weasley had been inside a Muggle house, and foremost in his mind was the thought that his father would have cheerfully emptied the Weasleys' meagre savings account, and probably sold his right arm and his left leg, if it would allow him to be there at this precise moment. The combination of all this fascinating Muggle paraphernalia and the vision of a shorn Lucius Malfoy in fancy dress would have been just too great a temptation for Arthur to resist.

"You look ridiculous," said Snape, voicing Bill's own thoughts. Lucius raised one hand half-way to his scalp, a reflexive gesture that he quickly stilled. Snape's mouth twitched. He was leaning against the door jamb, his arms still crossed in front of his chest, the wand only a quick flick from being lethal, watching Lucius through half-lidded eyes. It was, Bill reflected, a very conscious attempt at portraying relaxation; he suspected that Snape was actually on the brink of bolting, and perhaps Lucius had the same idea, because he beckoned Snape imperiously over to an ornate and thoroughly uncomfortable looking sofa. Snape shook his head. Lucius scowled. "So - you're alive," said Snape again. He seemed a little more composed. Bill fought off the impulse to start examining Muggle artefacts and instead peered from one Slytherin to the next with unabated curiosity. "Alive and, it appears, now a complete and utter raving lunatic."

"Merely a pragmatist," returned Lucius, glancing down at himself with distaste. "I endure this sullying because it is preferable to the alternative. Barely. And see how successful my disguise has been - I've got them all fooled, haven't I?" Snape nodded, and his scowl had grown so ferocious now that it almost looked as if he were trying not to grin. "These unimaginative Gryffindors can't begin to guess what compromises and indignities a Slytherin might be willing to endure, given sufficient motivation." There was an inflection there that made Bill suspect he was missing part of this conversation, that he lacked a necessary context for understanding. "Still, I find that survival is an excellent motivator, my old friend."

"Don't," said Snape, harshly. Lucius had mirrored Snape's pose, leaning back against a door in the opposite wall with his arms crossed in front of his narrow chest. His expression was mocking in a way that reminded Bill of being at school; the Slytherin kids really had raised this kind of thing to an art form, or perhaps a competitive sport.

"Don't what, Severus?"

"Don't start this. We aren't friends, Lucius. We can never be friends. Not after everything we've been and done." Well, that's another question answered, thought Bill, gnawing absent-mindedly on a thumbnail. "I haven't come all this way to play games with you."

"Then why have you come all this way?" asked Lucius, his voice suddenly dropping low and soft. Insinuating. Intimate. Bill's mouth was suddenly dry, because that was exactly the question he'd been asking himself -- but here was the answer as well, as unambiguous as it was disturbing. Without really thinking about it, Bill had stepped closer to the professor. Snape's expression was difficult to read; Bill glanced from Snape to Lucius and back again, and wondered what was going on in the potion master's head.

"You think you know me so well?" Snape demanded at last. His voice was icy, but it made Lucius's smile widen. Bill watched Lucius push himself away from the wall and cross the room very deliberately. As he drew closer, he slowed down, finally stopping just too close for comfort. Bill was close enough to touch them both, if he only stretched out his hand. He didn't move. Neither did Snape, but his breathing had quickened noticeably. Bill glanced down at Snape's wand hand, and saw that the knuckles were white.

"Severus, Severus," murmured Lucius, still smiling. "Of course I know you so well. I know you better than any of them ever have. I understand you the way no Gryffindor ever could - not your humourless headmistress nor that repulsive Weasley, nor the cur Lupin." Bill had stiffened at the reference to his father, and stared at Lucius with intense dislike. Very carefully, Lucius Malfoy raised one curled hand and brushed the edge of Snape's sallow, sharp-cheeked face with the back of his fingers. "I know you, Severus."

Snape's eyes closed and his head went back when Lucius touched him, and the look on his face was enough to distract Bill from his sudden reverie about how much he was going to enjoy handing Lucius in to the authorities. Snape's expression took Bill's breath away and embarrassed him quite as much as if he had walked in on them both naked - but he did not look away. He had never had a great deal to do with Severus Snape; there were ten years between them, and when Bill went up to Hogwarts as a first year, Snape had already completed his studies there and apprenticed himself to Arsenius Jigger. Bill knew of Snape, though, from the brothers who had had the misfortune to study under him, and he did not have a very high opinion of the man, war hero or no. And yet the sheer intensity and intimacy of this expression made Bill blush. It struck him then that Snape was not a man whom people often touched. Coming as he did from a household where rough and tumble games and motherly hugs had made physical contact as normal as breathing, the way that Snape responded to this mildest of caresses was quite astounding. An unexpected surge of something that wasn't quite pity washed over Bill. Sympathy, perhaps - but sympathy sounded fine and selfless, and there was a darker edge to this sensation. If Snape were so responsive to a chaste slide of skin against his cheekbone - Bill's mouth was suddenly dry, and he didn't want to know why.

"Don't," breathed Snape, but his voice was only a shadow of its former self. It was the kind of 'don't' that really failed to convince. Bill swallowed. Lucius cupped Snape's cheek, and brushed his thumb almost meditatively across Snape's lower lip. Snape's eyes were still closed. He looked almost like he were in pain.

"Don't what?" asked Lucius very softly, moving closer. There was barely a handspan separating their bodies now. It seemed to take an effort of will for Snape to open his eyes, and when he looked at Lucius his eyes were huge and hopeless, pupils dilated as if drugged. "Sshh," said Lucius. "It's all right, Severus. I forgive you." And so saying, he swayed that little bit closer and licked the corner of Snape's mouth, wringing a gasp from him. Lucius's tongue darted between the parted lips in the swiftest of teasing strokes, and then out again, and Snape made a choked sound of protest before stepping into the embrace and sealing his mouth to Lucius's lips. Bill stared, his antipathy all but forgotten, as Lucius responded by shoving the other man hard against the wall; and then it was all urgent hands crushing into flesh as if they wanted to tear one another apart, robes and all, and mouths locked together as if determined to devour one another. Bill pressed the heel of his hand down hard against the tented front of his galibeya, torn between unexpected lust and honest embarrassment at finding this arousing when it should have been risible. Fred and George, he knew, would have found it utterly hilarious. He realised then that, whatever else happened, he would not be telling Fred or George about this. But certainly the Wizarding World needed to know that Lucius Malfoy was alive. The man was guilty of war crimes, and Bill was the son of the Minister of Magic.


	2. Sunset

It was only the sound of Snape's wand hitting the floor that pulled them apart. Snape pushed Lucius away as if suddenly scalded, and ducked down to retrieve his wand. His face, when he rose, was pale as parchment, and his hands were trembling. There was a bead of blood on his lower lip where Lucius had bitten him too hard. The two men stared at one another for a long moment, and the air crackled with possibilities.

"Don't," Snape said again, and his voice was hoarse but determined. "Lucius. Don't. This isn't why I came."

Lucius laughed out loud. "Yes it is. Of course it is. Don't lie to yourself, I beg you."

"That is not why I came," repeated Snape, and he seemed to draw strength from the words, dishevelled though he was. "Lucius Malfoy, by the power vested in me as an agent of..."

"Oh please, spare me," interrupted Lucius, all elegant contempt. "You wouldn't give me to them, Severus, and we both know it. Who else in the world knows you as I do? Who else wants you as I do? Who understands what you need?" His tone was dark and intimate, and it made Snape shiver, actually shiver before Bill's eyes. "It's all over now, Severus. I'm not plotting my vengeance on what's left of your precious Order, and you know it. We lost. In the face of young Potter's appalling power, nobody could ever hope to win. I am not a stupid man, Severus. He's a freak of nature, but I shan't underestimate him again."

Snape's expression was unreadable. In the street outside, the call to prayer rang out from first one mosque and then another. The sun had set. "You know that he and your son..." Snape began, tentatively, but Lucius cut him off.

"I do not have a son. I do not have a son, a wife, a home, or a master. I lost everything, Severus. I am alone in a foreign land, living among Muggles. I am become the thing I despise. I am no threat to your Order, or to the Ministry, or to Harry Fucking Potter. I am simply - myself." He had begun this recitation in fine, high-handed Malfoy mode, but by the end there was such quiet despair in his voice then that Bill almost believed him. "And - I miss you."

The silence between them grew. Snape's wand remained pointed at his friend's throat.

"Lucius Malfoy, by the power vested in me as an agent of the Order of the Phoenix, I arrest you for crimes against the Wizarding World and Mugglekind." It was all Bill could do to keep from clapping.

Lucius stared at him. "You are not serious," he said at last. "How can you choose them over me? They don't want you, Severus. They have never wanted you. Not Lily Evans all those years ago, not Albus Dumbledore, not any of them. They just used you, you fool. How can you side with them still?"

"Don't speak their names," Snape hissed. Lucius gaped, his incredulity turning to wrath. Bill very much doubted that Lucius had let his guard down this much to anyone before, and to be rewarded this way clearly was not quite what he had expected.

"Lily Fucking Evans? You would defend her still? Dee's balls, have you no spine? She never even - sweet weeping swine of Circe, Severus, you're a grown man, how can you still..."

The flood of words was cut off quite abruptly when Snape delivered a ringing, open-handed slap with his left hand. Bill was as astonished as Lucius.

"Enough," said Snape, in a cold, precise voice. Lucius ran astonished fingers over his face. Bill could see the outline of Snape's hand, red on white. "I'm taking you back with me."

Lucius stepped away. He looked furious. "I will not go," he said, every inch the enraged Deatheater.

"Yes, you will. I know what you did, Lucius. You have to pay."

"You hit me," said Lucius, almost as if he had not heard Snape's words at all. "You hit me. That isn't how this goes." Bill saw then again as they must once have been. He wondered what exactly had been between them. "You have never - Severus, what has happened to you?"

"I will see justice served, Lucius," Snape said. Bill noticed that he wasn't meeting the other man's eyes, but on the whole he couldn't really blame Snape for that reluctance. "If things had been different, perhaps - but Albus Dumbledore died because of you. I can't forgive that."

Bill's hiss of indrawn breath was too loud, but the two of them were clearly too involved in their conversation to pay attention to it. Lucius looked, if possible, even more dumbfounded than he had a moment before.

"That old fool? This is really because of him? Narcissa is dead. Goyle is dead. Grimalkin, Pipistrelle, Matthews, Hex, Fotherington-Smythe - everyone I ever knew or gave a shred of a shit about died in that war. And, yes, so did Albus Dumbledore. I am responsible for more deaths than I can count, and so are you. But, my friend - I forgive you. I forgive you for betraying me, for lying to me all those years. I forgive you for everything. It's over. Let it lie." The anger was gone now. Lucius simply sounded sad. "Please."

"I can't do that," said Snape. His voice remained firm, but he sounded and looked thoroughly miserable.

Lucius stepped closer, ignoring the wand, and for a moment Bill thought he was going to kiss Snape again, but he didn't. "Severus," he said, and his voice was very gentle. "Severus, yes you can. If you want to. It doesn't matter any more - it's all over. What good will it do our dead, if we go on like this? Nothing can bring them back now. Nothing can change what happened." When he wanted to, Lucius Malfoy could make his voice remarkably persuasive. He reached out again and his pale fingers closed around a rat's tail strand of Snape's too-shiny black hair. He twined it around his fingertip. Snape let him, but the wand remained poised. "We have grown old in the service of other men, you and I. But you don't have to be alone any more."

Lucius Malfoy, Bill reflected with some surprise, could probably sell chocolate to Honeydukes, if he put his mind to it. He wasn't at all surprised to see the conflict on Snape's face. It was entirely possible, Bill thought to himself, that there was some Veela ancestry somewhere in the Malfoy family tree - certainly the colouring would make sense. Lucius's voice was pitched low enough for pillow talk, and it was no surprise to Bill when the blond head dipped forward to finally claim another kiss.

Clearly it was no surprise to Snape either, because as soon as Lucius's mouth brushed his, Snape's fingers were in his short white hair, jerking Lucius' head back so hard that he had to clutch at the front of Snape's robes for balance. Lucius looked absolutely furious, with his long pale throat exposed like the neck of some mild sacrificial calf.

"Lucius, I am not a fool," Snape said. Considering the contained violence of his movement, his voice was surprisingly calm. Bill decided not to think very hard about how extraordinarily sexy he had found that little move. "And I am not playing games with you, sexual or otherwise. I am here to take you back. I recommend you get used to the idea as quickly as you can, Lucius. In this, I shall not be ruled by you. I know my duty." It looked like the words scorched his mouth, but he spoke them anyway.

"Your duty?" snarled Lucius incredulously as he strained to right himself. "This isn't your fucking DUTY, Severus. You're enjoying this, you self righteous little prick." He thrashed around furiously, and Snape released him. They stared at one another, both pale and trembling.

"As Hecate is my witness, Lucius, I take no pleasure in this," Snape said. His voice shook very slightly. He wasn't prepared for Lucius's sudden lunge forward. Bill marvelled at Lucius Malfoy's utter conviction that, wand or no wand, Severus Snape simply would not hurt him. He reached unhesitatingly into the folds of Snape's dark robes and closed his hand firmly over what he knew was there. Snape's eyelids fluttered and he gasped in spite of himself.

"No pleasure, Severus?" he said, bitingly. "Really? It certainly feels like you're taking pleasure out of this." He punctuated his words with movements, sharp and unmistakable, and rather than protest, or hex him into the middle of next week, Snape seemed to buckle and half-collapse against the wall. He really did look as if he were in pain, but Bill was quite sure that Lucius was not actually hurting him. "You don't tell me what to do," Lucius said, his voice reduced to a vicious whisper. He was all Malfoy in that instant, despite his Muggle clothes and cropped hair. "You do what I tell you to, don't you? Don't you?"

Snape, Bill saw (with a mixture of pity and inappropriate appreciation) had lost it. It wasn't logical, because he was the man with the wand, but whatever relationship these two had did not seem to owe a great deal to logic. Unarmed as he was, Lucius Malfoy remained sublimely convinced that he held all the power in the room, and by believing it he made it so. He was leaning into Snape as he groped him, practically daring him to try that little dominance thing with the hair one more time. Snape's breath was terribly loud in the quiet room, his gasps harsh and urgent and uncontrolled. His hands had come up between them, pushing at Lucius's chest in a vain attempt to break the embrace. He seemed to have temporarily forgotten his wand again. Lucius could not take his eyes offSnape's face, and Bill couldn't blame him: it was not that Severus Snape was a good looking man, but there was an agonized intensity contorting his face, a desperate struggle not to yield that made Bill want to bite him, and make him beg. It was - distracting. But this was not how things were supposed to go, damn it, thought Bill, adjusting his galibeya slightly and refusing to touch himself.

"You just want me to punish you, don't you?" asked Lucius, hoarsely. "That's what this is all about. You're just trying to provoke me."

"No," Snape managed to grate out at last. "No, I - no. This isn't - oh. Oh!" He moved helplessly, ground once more between Lucius Malfoy and the wall, and he looked like he was on the brink of losing language altogether. His eyes were huge and hopeless, the irises reduced to delicate edges of colour around vastly dilated pupils. His lips were wet, and smudged with his own blood. Bill wanted to lick them.

Lucius leaned right into Snape's ear, his lips brushing the pale shell of it as he spoke. "You don't give a shit about Dumbledore, Severus. You just wanted to make me angry." But this, Bill knew at once, was precisely the wrong thing to say. He watched Snape flinch, and a look of such utter self-contempt crossed his face then that Bill almost flinched himself. Abruptly Snape seemed to remember the existence of his wand, and he gasped out a few syllables that sent Lucius flying to the floor.

They stared at one another again, and Bill realised he had stopped breathing. It struck him, out of nowhere, that he had absolutely no idea how much longer his chameleon glamour was going to last.

"You will go back with me now, Lucius, or I shall kill you myself," Snape said. His voice was uneven and he looked more dishevelled than ever, but Bill believed him. Once again, he wanted to cheer.

Lucius started to sit up, and Snape shook his head. Instead, Lucius propped himself up on his elbows and scowled. "I will not go," he said, with absolute conviction.

"Imperio." The word fell into the silence like a blow. Thinking of what little he knew about Snape's experiences with Voldemort, Bill doubted that this was a spell he would cast lightly. Pehaps Lucius had counted on him not being willing to cast it at all. Or perhaps it had never occurred to him that Snape would put up any kind of fight. "Lucius Malfoy, you will accompany me now to the Ministry of Magic," said Snape. He was breathing too heavily, and Bill wondered, entirely irrelevantly, whether he was still hard underneath his robes. Snape, Bill knew, was going to be in quite a bit of trouble for this, one way or another, and it certainly didn't help that he was compounding his errors by using an Unforgivable Curse. If Arthur didn't overlook it, though, Bill was damned well going to disown him. He felt enormously, and quite inappropriately, proud of Snape.

Lucius got slowly to his feet. His expression was one of furious disbelief, but he got to his feet nevertheless, because nothing else was possible. Snape tried to smooth his rumpled robes with an uncharacteristic awkwardness, and he would not meet Lucius's gaze. The silence was thick with unspoken things.

And then, as simple as that, they Disapparated, and Bill was left alone in a strange Muggle house with nothing to show for his foray into playing spies but a half-spent glamour amulet and a very insistent erection. He gave a shaky laugh, and raked a hand through his hair. This was not at all how he had expected the day to unfold.

As he left the house and hurried back towards the familiar comfort of The Street of Smoke and Dreams, Bill Weasley turned all the devious intelligence and creativity which he usually channelled into breaking ancient Egyptian curses towards the troublesome question of how to initiate an acquaintance with Professor Severus Snape.

* * * 

It was long past midnight when Bill got home, and Ashrakat, winding herself around his ankles and complaining loudly, made her feelings very clear on the subject of cat owners who went off to work all day and half the night without so much as a by your leave. After almost falling over her twice, Bill picked her up and cradled her in the crook of one arm, scratching behind her ears while he obediently found her plate, filled it with dried liver and chitterlings and set it down on the mat. Being a practical creature, Ashrakat promptly forgot about his existence and set to, purring noisily. Duty done, Bill kicked off his shoes, padded over the mismatched rugs and collapsed onto the bed. It had been a very long day, and although he had succeeded in breaking through three layers of protective wards and had finally cracked a particularly vicious little thicket of curses, he had still made far less progress than he'd hoped.

The problem, Bill knew, was that he wasn't concentrating - and in this job, not concentrating was more than enough to get you, and everyone with you, killed. But it was difficult to concentrate, when everywhere was trumpeting the latest gossip about Lucius Malfoy's trial. There was no way he could ignore it. His colleagues were discussing it over coffee, the people in Diagon Ali's were all talking about it and the newspapers were full of it. Colin Creevely's latest dispatches from the courtroom adorned the front page of The Daily Prophet every morning, and even The Pyramid had run a series of articles about missing Death Eaters to tie in with the unfolding courtroom drama. Under normal circumstances, Bill would probably still have paid attention to the trial - any member of the Order was bound to be interested in the discovery that Lucius Malfoy was alive - but he had a particular reason for following the news now.

Bill scowled at the ceiling. The cartoon in this morning's copy of The Prophet had shown Professor Snape on the witness stand. It had not been a flattering depiction; years ago the Ministry had acknowledged his contribution to the war effort with a couple of medals, but there had always been plenty of gossip to suggest that his true allegiance had been to Voldemort - or else to the highest bidder. Bill had halfway believed it himself, and had always wondered whether Snape had truly been loyal to Dumbledore. To wizards under the age of 26 or so, Severus Snape remained, first and foremost, the teacher they had all loathed. Snape, Bill reflected, really must have been a dreadful teacher, to inspire such loathing in his pupils. Certainly Fred, George and Ron all hated him with a passion that the passage of years had not dimmed. One way or another, he was not a popular man. Small wonder, then, that the cartoon in The Prophet showed a stoop-shouldered, hook-nosed old villain with glistening droplets of oil dripping unceasingly from his black hair and an expression of pronounced guilt contorting his face. The paper implied, without actually writing anything actionable, that Snape had been extremely nervous to see Lucius on the stand, and that perhaps Lucius might reveal the truth about "other Death Eaters who have been hiding in public view." Bill had been astonished by the strength of his indignation - the pages were still crumpled almost beyond legibility, despite his best attempts to straighten them out again. No mention had been made of Snape's role in how Lucius Malfoy had come to be arrested. Perhaps, Bill reflected, it was not public knowledge. Perhaps Snape did not want it to be known - or perhaps it was simply that Colin Creevely had decided to gloss over it as not in keeping with the villainous role he was assigning Professor Snape.

"Oh, Circe, this is ridiculous," Bill told himself out loud. He had found his attention wandering to Severus Snape far too often over the past few weeks. He had really never given the man a moment's thought until he walked into Diagon Ali's coffee shop a month earlier. Certainly he had met Snape - indeed, they had attended meetings of the Order of the Phoenix, and they had both been involved in the clean up crews whose job it was to seek out and arrest former Death Eaters after young Harry Potter destroyed Voldemort, and before they had the opportunity to regroup. He had never gone out of his way to win anyone's friendship or esteem during meetings of the Order, and Bill had never taken to him. He was quite as prickly and poisonous as any of the venomous beasts that Hagrid and Charlie housed at Monster Zoo. And yet Bill couldn't escape the conviction that there was more to Severus Snape than this. He had moved from suspicious to sympathetic entirely against his will, and now he found himself unable to stop thinking about Lucius Malfoy's trial in terms of its impact upon Hogwarts' irascible, bloody minded Potions Master. It was, Bill realised, quite ridiculous, but he couldn't unknow what he had seen. He couldn't stop wondering about the relationship between Snape and Lucius Malfoy, and he couldn't stop remembering the look on Snape's face. Whenever he wasn't concentrating properly, his mind went back to what he had seen a month earlier, and his body reacted with depressing, and generally inconvenient, predictability. It had reached the point, today, where he was making errors that would embarrass a journeyman. Juniper Rose, Bill's apprentice, had shot him some very concerned glances as they worked on unravelling the layers of antique magic protecting a goblin sarcophagus that had just been shipped in from Sakkara. Bill had gritted his teeth and done his damnedest to concentrate, but eventually he had to excuse himself and go to splash cold water on his face and mutter a quick charm.

Lying in the half-light of his room, with the Bill found himself once again as hard as an adolescent, thinking about Severus Snape. This was getting to be a habit.


	3. Chapter 3

There had been photographers hanging around the Three Broomsticks at first, of course, but between Rosmerta and McGonnagal, it didn't take long before even the most daring of former war correspondents thought better of lurking around Hogsmeade in search of an exclusive on the elusive Professor Severus Snape. When he stepped out of the fireplace, he was relieved to find the pub harbouring nothing more irritating than a handful of prefects sipping butterbeer and trying to flirt Rosmerta into letting them have some firewhisky. Snape headed purposefully as far from the students as he could, and sat down in a secluded little alcove where it would be impossible for anyone to approach - or indeed attack - without Snape seeing them. Some habits died hard. He leaned back until the back of his head touched the wall, and heaved a sigh. It had not been a good day. A brace of Gryffindors whose fervent admiration for a half-Veela Ravenclaw far outstripped their actual potions skill had been foolhardy enough to dabble in aphrodisiac brewing. They had managed to combine Kankanath bile with powdered wyvern scales, and the resultant explosion had left the potions lab reeking and stained beyond the House Elves' capacity to quickly remedy. Snape had left the Gryffindors on their hands and knees, scrubbing miserably as the House Elves worked around them. Once the lab was restored, they could look forward to explaining themselves to the Headmistress, whose views upon the illicit distillation of aphrodisiacs were extremely well known. (For that matter, Snape rather thought that the Ravenclaw in question would have a thing or two to say about the Gryffindors' intentions.)

And tomorrow - tomorrow he would be in court again, to hear what was to become of Lucius Malfoy. He tried to concentrate upon being irritated with Verity Hemolock, who would be, once again, providing cover for his classes, and teaching them all sorts of poppycock. The irritation, however, did not suffice to muffle the dull sense of dread he felt.

He didn't want Lucius to die. Or suffer, in whatever fashion the Ministry might invent. He knew he had done the right thing, and he genuinely believed that Lucius should pay for his crimes - and yet at the same time, he was horrified by what he had done. What was one more betrayal to add to all the betrayals he had already committed? But it was one too many. Lucius would still be perfectly safe if he hadn't trusted Severus Snape, and the fact that Snape had neither sought nor wanted that trust didn't make him feel any better.

And, beneath the guilt, there was another, more selfish regret. Lucius knew him too well - better than anyone, really. And yet Lucius had still wanted him. Severus's fingers closed around the glass that Rosmerta had brought, and he knocked back the first firewhisky in a single swallow. He didn't look up as Rosmerta silently removed the empty glass from the tabletop and replaced it with a full one. Lucius Malfoy had wanted him enough to run the risk of capture and imprisonment, perhaps even memory wiping or forcible transformation. It was years since the last time that Snape had been alone with Lucius Malfoy, and the memory of their recent encounter had given him sleepless nights and erections at highly inconvenient moments. Their subsequent interactions across a courtroom, before the eyes and ears of judge, jury, lawyers and journalists, had broken what was left of his heart.

Across the room he could hear the children laughing and flirting with one another. They were all, he thought, sourly, too young to have understood the full horror of Voldemort's Undeclared War. His glass was empty again. He glared at it, and a moment later Rosmerta quietly placed a full bottle on the table. She winked at him as she turned to tend to her other customers, and Snape was left uncertain of whether to be touched or affronted. He poured himself another drink while he tried to decide.

 

* * *

 

"Thank you, anyway, " said Bill, as he deposited all the books back on the table with a sigh.

Madame Pince frowned. "No good, dear?"

He shook his head, smiling ruefully, and she made a small clucking noise of sympathy as she scooped them possessively back in her arms. Bill shrugged. "Never mind. Thank you for letting me check, anyway."

He left the library without any great sense of regret, conscious of the gazes and whispers of assorted school children. He had developed quite a following already, to his embarrassment, and Minerva McGonnagal had informed him the previous evening that there was already gossip that he was going to be appointed the next DADA Professor. He had choked on his pumpkin juice when she delivered that particular little gem; Bill found it taxing enough to train up his journeyman. The prospect of teaching a whole gaggle of children was frankly appalling. He wasn't at all sure which would be worse: dealing with the limited attention spans of the eleven year olds, or dealing with the pouting and primping and outright flirtation of the seventeen year olds. Both notions appalled him. Coping with murderous mummies, cursed tombs and animated statues was one thing, but fending off nagging children was something else altogether.

It felt distinctly odd to be back at Hogwarts; so many things were exactly the same, and this only made the changes feel stranger. The statue of Albus Dumbledore in the entrance hall put a lump in Bill's throat. Ridiculously, the prefects in their badges actually made him feel guilty, as though he had been up to no good and was about to be found out and given detention. Which was nonsensical, since he was very much older than all of them, and was perfectly entitled to be in the school. He wasn't up to anything.

Or at least - his ostensible reason for being here was perfectly valid. Granted it was unlikely that the library at Hogwarts would be able to provide help for his research where the library at Alexandria had failed to, but it was possible. There was no reason for anyone to suspect that he had another motive for being here. No reason at all. Bill's smile twisted a little. One would have thought that actually being in the same building as Severus Snape would help a person to strike up a conversation with him, but one would have been quite wrong in this assumption. He had seen the Potions Master from a distance during breakfast and dinner, he had even contrived to walk beside him 'coincidentally' several times in the corridor, and had twice attempted to strike up a conversation. He had been rewarded, on each occasion, with monosyllabic response and a glower that made him feel like a naughty school boy, rather than a visiting expert in his own right.

Severus Snape, Bill was discovering, was roughly as approachable as a basilisk.

 

* * *

 

Rosmerta was a surprisingly good dancer, as it turned out. Snape had never really wondered about this one way or the other, but when one of the more daring prefects - one Henry Beesom, a brawny Gryffindor with vast confidence in his own charms and wisdom - proposed that she dance with him, she had startled them all by agreeing. Snape watched with some amusement as Beesom's cockiness gave way to blushes while he whirled Rosmerta around the room. Snape swallowed another mouthful of firewhisky, and tried to remember the last time he had danced like that. They twirled between tables, Rosmerta's bright skirts flaring out, and the other prefects whooped and whistled their encouragement. Snape's heart clenched in his chest. This was the wrong place for him. Lucius was the only person who would dare to take such a liberty with Severus Snape, and tomorrow would see Lucius condemned to who knew what.

He was not very steady on his feet, but his scowl was so forbidding that nobody dared comment as he made his swaying way to the door. He took the bottle with him.

 

* * *

 

The night air was refreshingly cool - too cold, really, for someone who was accustomed to Cairo. Bill wished that he had thought to bring a scarf. He struck a lucifer, protected the flicker of flame in his cupped hand, and lit the last of his illicit Muggle cigarettes. He ought to go home.

 

* * *

 

Lily Evans was quite the last person he had been expecting to see, and yet he found himself wholly unsurprised. It was their spot, after all; perfectly natural that she should be there. Smoke threaded through the night air, and the glowing tip of her cigarette shone like a tiny fallen star in her hand. She had her back to him, and her unbound hair fell around her shoulders in a curtain of dark red. Snape set the bottle down very gently on the grass - it was almost empty now - and then stepped up behind her and wrapped both arms around her waist. She froze perfectly still in his embrace, and he buried his face in her hair, breathing in the clean scent of her. It was all he could do to keep from weeping.

 

* * *

 

Bill very nearly dropped his cigarette when the arms closed around his waist. Growing up with Fred and George had gone a long way towards making him difficult to startle, but this was still unexpected. He stood quite still while an unfamiliar body pressed itself into the contours of his back, and an unfamiliar face pressed itself into his hair. The someone, whoever they might be, did not seem to be aggressive, at least. Clingy, yes. Aggressive, no. Warm breath stirred the hair at the nape of his neck, and Bill was quite conscious that his new best friend was not a girl. Very definitely. And was also very pleased to see him. Very pleased indeed.

Bill flicked the cigarette away and drew a deep breath. "Not that I'm not enjoying this, you understand, because I really rather am, but don't you think we could be introduced first?"

Bill had been braced for how violently he was released, and he turned very quickly and grasped at the withdrawing wrists before they were quite out of reach, only to find himself staring, not into the eyes of a sheepish sixth former, but at the Potions Master himself. He felt his jaw drop, and knew that his own expression must mirror the dumbfounded look upon Severus Snape's face. There was an utterly bemused pause, and Bill could feel Snape trying quite hard - but not hard enough - to break his hold.

"You're not - I thought - oh, fuck," said Snape, staring at him glassy-eyed, his cut-glass tones decidedly less crisp than usual. He was, Bill realised, belatedly, utterly sozzled. "She's dead. Still."

Bill considered this statement, and reminded himself that it was very bad to take advantage of someone who was under the influence of alcohol, and took in the uncharacteristically lost look on Snape's face, and the too-fast breathing, and thought about how the Potions Master had clung to him a moment earlier, and decided that perhaps, House notwithstanding, he actually was a very bad man after all.

"But you're not dead," he said, smiling one of his darker smiles. "And neither am I."

It turned out to be surprisingly easy to manouver Snape back into the shadows, and the way that Snape let himself be shoved into the wall, and the small whuff of sound he made as half the air was shoved out of him, made Bill's throat tighten. This was not the sort of opportunity that arose more than once in a blue moon, and Bill's whole career was built upon his ability to spot the weak spots in defences and take ruthless advantage of them. He pressed Snape's hands back against the wall, and settled himself up against Snape's chest and thighs. Severus Snape was still, he quickly gathered, really quite pleased to see him, regardless of whether or not he had expected to encounter a Weasley this evening.

"This isn't," Snape began, belligerance fading into an awkwardness that was almost skittish as he glanced around them and then looked back at Bill. "I don't, I mean, this really isn't - it's not very." He licked his lips, and squirmed very slightly, and there was something desperate in his voice that was almost an entreaty - but not an entreaty to stop. "Don't you think we - that is - I mean - just who the hell do you think you are?"

He did not sound, to Bill, like someone who did not want to be touched.

"I think I'm Bill Weasley," Bill said, leaning in very close and whispering right into Snape's ear. His mouth brushed Snape's earlobe, and as an afterthought he bit down briefly. The sound Snape made as he arched his back was deeply satisfying. "And I think that I may be exactly what you need right now. Don't you?"

"You have a singularly high opinion of yourself," muttered Snape, in a valiant, if unconvincing, attempt at disdain. Bill grinned.

"I do, at that. I really do. But then, you know," his voice dropped again to a confidential whisper, "I really am quite spectacular." He waggled his eyebrows, and added salaciously, "In many, many ways."

He had not known that Severus Snape could laugh. The discovery was quite endearing. And other things. Bill was kissing him before he had even consciously reached the decision, and the enthusiasm with which Snape responded was quite astonishing.

Maybe not so much like a basilisk, then. Although parts of Bill had quite definitely turned to stone.


	4. Starlight

The wall was cold against his back, and the firewhisky thrumming through his veins was making the whole world spin and buck like an unruly broom, and he knew that this was a bad idea, a terrible idea, the worst possible idea, that he was not himself, that in the morning he would be scalded with embarrassment and regret, and yet - and yet - and yet he could not bring himself to break away from the hard hands that encircled his wrists, from the warm, firm body pinning him ungently to the wall, from the soft lips and impertinent, irrepressible tongue that was so determinedly mastering his own.

Severus Snape simply did not do this kind of thing. Normally. But it seemed that this was not a normal night.

Bill Weasley (and in the morning there would be time to reflect, with horror, that this man was essentially a stranger, was the brother of those hideous twins and of Potter's little sidekick; that he was fully ten years Snape's junior; that Severus Snape had started teaching at Hogwarts while Bill Weasley was still a student, albeit not a student of Potions, albeit the Head Boy) insinuated one leg between Snape's thighs and Snape, pliable as water, helped him. He could feel Bill's erection pressing into his hip, insistent and impossible to ignore, and he shuddered and groaned helplessly against Bill's tongue. It had been entirely too long since anyone had touched him - only Lucius, in Cairo, and that was a memory he wanted to banish. His movements became frantic, grinding awkwardly against Bill's leg, trying to get enough purchase, trying to get enough friction. He was hard, and wet, and the world was still spinning, and what he needed more than anything was to have skin against skin now. But he wouldn't ask for it.

So maybe it was just the firewhisky on Snape's tongue that made the kisses so intoxicating, but Bill didn't think so. The man's eyes were huge, his pupils dilated as if drugged, and there was an expression of such bottomless need in them that it almost hurt to look at. It was exhilarating, like flying, like winging the unbinding of an ancient death curse, but infinitely better. Snape, who was one of the strongest wizards in the Order, who had terrorised generations of Weasleys, who ruled his classroom as a small totalitarian state - Severus Snape, grim inflexibility incarnate, was yielding all control to him. Severus Snape, Bill felt perfectly sure, would do any damned thing he was told right now. It was one hell of a power trip. Bill's breathing was ragged; he felt like a teenager again as he kissed and bit his way along Snape's jawline, exploring the shift in texture hungrily, possessively. This was his territory now. The small, urgent sounds that Snape was making seemed to be ripped right out of him, and Bill found them extraordinarily sexy. He licked Snape's bottom lip and then bit down hard, and was unsurprised when Snape arched his back and ground himself urgently against Bill's thigh. Bill realised, with embarrassment, that he was in some danger of coming inside his clothes. He sucked harder on Snape's tongue, thinking about what he would like to do with the professor; what the professor would let him do.

It was an awkward position: his fingers were still wrapped tightly around Snape's wrists, and he knew that this restraint was working for Snape, but it was effectively restricting his own movements too. He growled in frustration, pondering his options, and then he shifted slightly, pressing Snape's palms flat against the stone, his own hands resting atop them.

"Stay," he said, his voice hoarser than usual, pitched low and dangerous. Snape stared back at him, his eyes half-closed, his breathing uneven. Bill's eyes dared him to struggle. "You aren't going to move anything until I tell you to, are you?" The hiss of Snape's indrawn breath was very loud, and it made Bill smile. It wasn't a particularly kind smile. "That's what I thought." He started to unbutton Snape's clothes with a quiet and single-minded efficiency.

Bill dropped to his knees with a practised ease that would have appalled Molly Weasley. Snape watched the way Bill's pale fingers moved against his black clothes as if mesmerised, and had a sudden, vivid memory of himself kneeling before Lucius, that first time. He had not felt in control of the situation then, but somehow Bill Weasley had taken command of them both even though he was kneeling. He swallowed hard and looked away, staring blindly up at the stars and trying not to think about anything. When Bill finished unbuttoning his fly and slipped one hand inside the front of his trousers, Snape let go of the wall as if burnt, and bit down hard on the knuckles of his own clenched fist in an unsuccessful attempt to stifle his cries.

Bill stopped touching him, leaving Snape painfully hard and totally exposed to the chill night air. He glanced down at Bill, suddenly furious, and just as suddenly afraid. Oh, Merlin, Circe, Morgana, Dee - oh, by all that's magical, let it not be a jest. This was a Weasley, after all. A Gryffindor. The brother of the proprietors of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. For an excruciating moment Severus Snape was fourteen years old again, and the scapegoat for every vicious jape that James Potter and his cronies could conceive. His soul shrivelled inside him. He waited.

"I told you not to move," said Bill Weasley, very softly. Snape shivered at the silky threat in his tone, and slowly dropped his hand back down to touch the wall. He was shaking. Bill Weasley laid his own hand gently over Snape's bitten knuckles and pressed down. His smile was dazzling. "That's more like it. I don't want to have to punish you, Severus. Can I call you Severus, Professor? No, don't answer. We both know that I can. And you can call me - hmm. Sir. Yes, why not. Sir. Is that understood?"

"Yes," said Snape, his voice in tatters. This was too much, too fast, and the world was still spinning every time he closed his eyes. He met Bill Weasley's extraordinary gaze and swallowed.

Snape closed his eyes again, and so he did not see Bill lick his lips and lower his head. He had a split second's warning as warm breath brushed his skin, and then he felt Bill's wet tongue slide over him. His eyes snapped open. It took all his effort not to cry out again as this unfamiliar mouth licked and sucked its way along him. His pulse was pounding so loudly that surely the very stones must soon start to resound with it, and give them both away. He bit his lip, hard, determined not to give Bill Weasley the satisfaction of hearing him moan; but helpless, half-smothered sounds of stifled pleasure escaped him, would he or no. Bill Weasley was, it transpired, quite criminally good at this. He would never have guessed. It had never even occurred to him as a possibility until a few minutes ago.

It had been far too long since anyone had made more than the briefest and most abortive of sallies at intimacy with Severus Snape. Over the years he had gradually fortified his defences against casual familiarity to the point that he could crush the pretensions of any amorous -- or even amiable -- young witch or wizard with a single steely glare. It was utterly useless against Lucius, of course, because Lucius understood him perfectly. Or at least, some things about him.

Lily Evans, Lucius Malfoy and Albus Dumbledore were the only people who had ever bothered to look at Severus Snape properly, and two of them were dead now, and one of them was going to be sentenced in the morning.

Bill Weasley's blessed mouth was well on the way to making him forget their very names, however briefly. Without the wall to support him, Snape would certainly have fallen down by now; closing his eyes made the world spin wildly around him, but opening his eyes provided him with the equally dizzying image of Bill Weasley -- dashing curse breaker, occasional contributer to the Notes and Queries section of The Daily Prophet, decoder of Thoth's very own Book of the Dead and one-time Head Boy of Hogwarts - kneeling in the grass with his mouth stretched taut around Severus Snape's erect cock.

Severus Snape helpless, with buttons askew and shirt untucked, with dark hair tousled and falling across his face, with lips parted and glossy, with eyes half-lidded and lost-looking, with breath coming in hoarse, urgent pants and with his palms pressed obediently against the stone wall behind him as if his life depended upon it, was definitely one of the sexiest things that Bill Weasley had ever seen. He wrapped his hand tighter around the man's erection and licked quick hieroglyphics along the quivering underside of his cock. Above him, Snape moaned, and muttered something that might possibly have been a plea. It was still a little too restrained for Bill's liking. The muscles in Bill's face twitched towards a smile, and he sucked wetly and hard, swallowing as much of Snape as he could get into his mouth and darting his tongue along the heated skin.

"I - oh, Circe - I - oh, please. Please. Yes!" This time Snape's plea was more than audible. It carried very clearly on the still night air. Bill pulled away with some reluctance and turned his attention to licking and sucking his way around Snape's cock, feeling it brush against his cheek as he lightly bit the soft skin covering Snape's belly. He smiled at the hiss of outraged indrawn breath. "Don't stop! Bloody - you - don't stop, damn it," snarled Snape, his voice like torn velvet. Bill took a firmer hold on Snape's hips and pressed his face into the pale skin, inhaling the musky smell of aroused and irritable potions master with definite enjoyment. Snape made a small strangled sound above him, and Bill's grin grew wider. He dragged his teeth down towards the exposed slice of Snape's thigh visible above his half-tumbled trousers, ignoring the erection entirely. "You total, total bastard." Severus Snape sounded almost as if he were on the verge of laughter or tears, his resonant voice shaky, strained perilously close to breaking. Bill glanced up, and felt something like an electric shock when his eyes locked on Snape's again. Snape was swinging wildly between murderous glares and expressions of painfully desperate entreaty in a way that fused Bill's entire spine. He swore involuntarily under his breath and rose very quickly, ignoring the frustrated growl that the potions master made.

"My God, Severus. My God," he exclaimed, wonderingly. "Just look at you." Snape tried valiantly to muster a proper scowl, but his eyes were too glazed and his breathing far too hard. Bill cupped the curve of Snape's sallow cheek with his left hand and kissed him as if it were the most important thing in the world. His right hand dipped back down to slide between them, finding Snape's erection and wrapping around it with the ease of long practice. Snape groaned against him, and he ground himself against Snape's thigh with rather more fervour than control.

It was, surprisingly, Snape who stopped it when he was surely right on the very brink of spending. Bill was startled by the suddenness and violence with which Snape shoved him away. He stumbled back, almost losing his footing, and frowned at the other man in confusion, feeling indignation welling up inside him as Snape began to pull his clothes together.

"What exactly do you," he began, dangerously, but then he too caught the sound of approaching teenage voices. "Oh, shit."

"Quite," said Snape, buttoning up his trousers with trembling fingers and pulling his robe closed in what struck Bill as a rather futile attempt to look like someone who had not, in fact, been engaged in any kind of illicit erotic activity only a few second earlier. Bill quickly tucked himself back into his trousers, fastening them as quickly as he could manage, and then patted his own clothes until he dug out a slightly crumpled cigarette box and offered it to Snape. Snape, he could not help but notice, was steadfastly ignoring him. This did not strike Bill as particularly promising.

"Cigarette?" he offered, cautiously.

"Kindly fuck off," hissed Severus Snape, all his composure and vitriol evidently back with a vengeance. He raked a hand shakily through his disordered black hair and swung around to direct a look of such absolute venom at Bill Weasley that Bill actually flinched. "I don't know what I was thinking. I don't know what - I - how - this is not who I am. This is insane."

The teenagers rounded the corner, laughing, arm-in-arm. A boy and a girl gazing at each other excitedly, the smouldering tips of their cigarettes bobbing through the air like furious wil'o'the wisps.

"And just what do you imagine you are doing here, Mr Gorgon? Miss Pippistrelle?" The children froze like rabbits faced with a cockatrice. Bill pitied them. "Thirty points from Ravenclaw."

"But we," began the boy, belying his House's reputation for intelligence.

"FORTY points from Ravenclaw, Mr Gorgon," snarled Snape. The boy gulped.

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. We -- I -- we'll go now."

"And the cigarettes?"

"Sorry, Professor!" squeaked the girl, glancing from Snape to Bill with an expression of acute embarrassment. They both dropped their cigarettes and stamped on them, and then fled, still hand in hand.

Bill watched them go, and then turned back to Snape. The potions master was looking at him with the kind of loathing usually reserved for a particularly despicable kind of demonic cockroach, and all the odd passion that had been prickling in the air was fading to nothing. Damn it. He thought fast. Trying to get close to Severus Snape was very much like trying to crack the curses layered around Khufu's pyramid: every time you thought you were winning, something new tried to kill you. But Bill had cracked Khufu's pyramid in the end, and he was damned if he'd let Severus Snape defeat him; he couldn't remember the last time he'd been so intrigued by another person. Snape was a walking challenge, and Bill Weasley had never been good at ignoring challenges.

"Ah," he said, looking Snape up and down and giving no hint of the thoughts whirling around his own head. "I see. I didn't take you for a coward, Professor," he said, softly. Snape's nostrils flared, and he opened his mouth to reply but Bill shrugged. "You were the one who started this, after all."

"I didn't - that is - what happened was an accident," said Snape, heatedly. He looked flustered, and resentful, and had he been another man, Bill might have half-expected to be punched. As it was, he was quite prepared to duck a hastily hurled curse. "I didn't know it was you," explained Snape, scowling for all he was worth. "I thought - never mind what I thought. But you may rest assured that I do not commonly engage in this sort of unseemly behaviour. I was unwise to drink so much. It will not happen again."

"My mistake." Bill shrugged, and lit one of his cigarettes. "A pity. You seemed to be enjoying yourself." He sucked hard on the cigarette, and was satisfied by the flicker in Snape's eyes. Bill's mouth curled a little as he blew the smoke out into the air and looked Snape slowly up and down.

He licked his lips. "I know I was enjoying it."

"I," began Snape, but his voice faltered under Bill's glance. He was still hard, Bill knew, and it wouldn't take much, not really. Not if he was careful. Bill deliberately placed the cigarette back between his lips and sucked harder still. Charlie would have teased him mercilessly for being so blatant, but he could see Snape's defences crumbling. Whatever worked. The potions master licked his lips and drew an uneven breath. "I think perhaps - perhaps I will have a -- a cigarette -- after all."

Bill's smile promised all manner of vices, but he only offered Snape the packet. When their hands brushed very slightly, the sharp hiss of Snape's indrawn breath was as incriminating as it was involuntary. Bill pretended not to notice. There was a little pause, while Snape turned the cigarette over and over between his long fingers. Bill leaned back against the wall and looked up at the stars, carefully affecting nonchalance.

"And a light?" added Snape, after a while. His voice was uncharacteristically tentative. Bill cocked his head and leaned forward, his lips pursed around the cigarette and his eyebrow raised in challenge. Snape's face was very pale in the moonlight, and it occurred to Bill, belatedly, that the man was absolutely terrified. But he slipped the cigarette into his mouth and leaned closer, pressing the cold tip to Bill's glowing coals until it started to smoulder. When he started to step back, Bill's hand found Snape's. He laced their fingers together and just looked at him, allowing the desire to show in his eyes. Snape coughed, clearly startled, but after a moment he returned the pressure of Bill's fingers.

"Let's go to your room," said Bill, very gently, his thumb rubbing slow circles over Snape's skin.

Snape looked ready to bolt, or start hexing things, but after a moment he swallowed, and nodded. "Yes," he said breathlessly, as if not quite believing his own words. "Yes, all right."


End file.
